


Just Us Against the World

by thesumofus



Category: Coldplay (Band), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-The Reichenbach Fall, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 00:39:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4645956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesumofus/pseuds/thesumofus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A song on the radio echoes what Sherlock had said after he came barreling back into John's life. John rewrites the rest of the song to make sense to him and to try make sense of where he and Sherlock stand in regards to each other and the rest of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Us Against the World

**Author's Note:**

> Sherlock and John belong to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss too.  
> And the song 'Us Against the World' belong to Coldplay. There's a link to a purely instrumental version of the song here → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxdryKaf8dU so you can sing along at home ;)

John can't believe him. Not because his story is unbelievable, which it very much is but because of the nerve of the man. Which wasn't ever the case really because John knew that the nerve of a man like Sherlock, pray there isn't such another man, is something to be reckoned with. Even for Sherlock though, this is a step too far, which is saying something. John reasonably thought he was a tolerant man, he lived for months with a decapitated head in the fridge, for one. If that isn't the pinnacle of tolerance then John didn't fancy knowing what is, especially if it involved anything in being made to believe that your flat mate was dead for two whole years. Now that John just can't tolerate. Then to have said flatmate announce his undeadness by way of poorly disguising himself as a french waiter that's 2 steps too far.

  
Needless to say John is fuming. He can't attempt sleep, he knows he has no want for the stuff at the moment so he is sitting up at his desk and trying not to think about punching. This proves too much to hope for after a few minutes so John flicks on the radio to distract his dire thoughts. He isn't thinking about breaking Sherlock's nose. He isn't thinking about the months of needless grief. He is just a guy up at one in the morning listening to an embarrassingly, unmistakable Coldplay song. Through John's disarray a line of the lyrics catches his attention.  
through chaos as it swirls. It's us against the world

  
Wasn't that what Sherlock had said? Stopping the blood flow with a tissue, waiting for their kebabs. John had punched him again, funny how long the notion was staying with him after two indulgences. Just the two of us against the rest of the world. Only in a deluded moment when rational thought was won over by the rush of running alongside him could John make himself believe that statement. It is always just Sherlock. He doesn't need John. John hinders him, holds him back, patters on about eating enough and cleaning the flat. He'd have told him, at least one word. If it was really just the two of them against the rest of the world he would have told him he wasn't dead.

  
The song finishes and John turns the radio back off to let the tune gently rock in his head. He begins to hum and it ebbs away his anger, John lets it still. He doesn't know the words so he puts in what fits and he sings them softly under his breath. The words become lines, lines which John unintentionally gives sense to. In a fluster to remember them all he scribbles them down on a scrap bit of paper upon his desk.

  
Oh Hudders is dusting the flat again  
Now he’s back and playing the violin  
Bring on the cases let the crimes roll in  
In my heart he left a hole

He approaches in the restaurant trying to catch eyes  
Don’t recognize my best friend in a stupid disguise  
And I feel so betrayed I asked him to be alive  
Sherlock my everything

But he fell_____ to the ground  
All the lies I ignored  
Just us against the world

I was so alone and I made a friend  
But he died, he let me grieve now he’s back again  
How could he do that, my everything  
But I moved on and let it all go

And if I could runaway  
somewhere, alone to become more sane  
but he'd breathe down my neck and  
just enclose us in the pain

just enclose us in the pain  
just enclose us cos god know us, we're not sane

But you fell______ to the ground  
Don’t fall_______ down

through crime it unfurls  
it was us against the world  
in time it all unfurls  
just us against the world

 

After all the words are freed from his mind John doesn't read over them. Indifferent, he pushes the lyrics away from himself and gets up and walks over to the small couch in the room. Spread out across it, John looks up at the ceiling and he feels as relaxed as he has been since meeting Sherlock. He knows now. It isn't John and Sherlock against the world. It's John against the fact that Sherlock was his world but John can accept that now and he is comforted in the knowledge that come what may, he had survived without all that mattered most to him and he could do it again.

✦✦✦

  
Sherlock soundlessly climbs through the window, not for the first time yet this is the first time John is here too. Sherlock walks over to the couch where his old flat mate sleeps in an uncomfortable looking manner, still in the shirt and trousers he wore to dinner, but why? As soon as the question enters his mind he has the answer or the clues needed to find the answer but it's all the same thing to Sherlock. Blotches of ink on one cuff, the radio recently switched off and an empty tumbler on the coffee table. It all equaled to...

  
Human error. Not something he fully understands but he is well familiar with the subject at this point. Yet, he isn't aware of John getting anything wrong on the contrary he has a strong sense that John had just got something extremely right but what?

  
And again, there the answer is in the piece of paper on the desk. Sherlock picks it up and reads it and commits it to memory then replaces it roughly where it had laid before. John had got it right. It was human error to love Sherlock and he was comforted in the knowledge that everything would go back as it once was.


End file.
